The Ibo or Igbo are one of the three main clan
groups of Nigeria
, living mainly in the south east part of the country. The other two clan groups are the Yoruba
in the south west and the Hausa
in the north.
Ibo culture was traditionally agricultural, with a diet consisting mostly of yams, cassava, and palm. Historically, they did not have a developed system of centralized political leadership. This greatly annoyed the British when they showed up, so the British authorities appointed their own chiefs, whom the people then largely ignored.
In 1966, about six years after Nigeria gained independence from Britain, a civil war broke out between the Ibo and the Hausa and many Ibo living in the North were massacred. In 1967 Ibo politician Emeka Ojukwu declared the Ibo an independent nation, called Biafra. The war, which continued for the next three years, killed over one million people.
Most Ibo are Catholic by religion, while the Yoruba are mainly protestant and the Hausa mainly Muslim.
The famous book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is about a family of Ibo and what happens to them during the British colonization.